Bible Text: Luke 16:19-31 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
Everything we have belongs to God. This isn’t simply because we pledge all we have to God, it’s not that we first give all we have to God, and then it belongs to Him. It’s that it all already belongs to Him. The rich man’s wealth, his purple clothing and fine linen, his sumptuous meals, all belonged to God. And the proof of it is that when the rich man dies, he takes nothing with him to hell. It doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to God. And what belongs to God doesn’t go to hell.
Hell is where God is not. That is why it is torture. God is the source of all that is good. On earth even the unbelievers get to enjoy some of this good. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. The sun shines on the good and the bad. This is God’s grace to all, what we call His providence, that He provides for everything He made, and He does it in order to lead everyone to Him. Because when you enjoy anything good in this life, you are in fact enjoying God. And God is wanting to draw you to Him.
But people create hell on earth. If you look at Lazarus and the rich man, you’d think hell on earth is what Lazarus experienced. He’s poor, he’s got no money, no friends, he has sores all over his body, and he’s starving, wants to be fed with the scraps that the dogs eat. When people say, “We went through hell,” they mean something like what Lazarus went through. And you’d think that the rich man is experiencing heaven. Comfort, good food and drink, happy times. That’s what people think of when they think of heaven. But no, it’s the rich man who is living hell. And it’s Lazarus who’s living heaven. Even before they die.
Because the rich man is living without God. That’s what hell is. Living without God. He separates God from the stuff God gave him. He takes the stuff, but excludes God. God is in none of his thoughts. And we know this by his works. Works don’t save you. Only faith in Jesus saves you. But how you act on this earth does prove whether you are God’s child or not. Because you can’t think on the God who gave you everything you have and then not love your neighbor outside your door who needs what God gave you. He who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar (1 John 4.2). There is a necessary connection between cause and purpose here. God is the cause for all you have. Why do you have what you have? Because God gave it. And since this is so, you know the purpose for all you have. It is to glorify your God and to help your neighbor. That’s why you have it. So when God is in your thoughts, you love, because God is love and He’s showered that love on you.
This is why the teaching of evolution is so evil. It takes God away as the cause of you and of everything you have, and it replaces Him with chance and nothingness. That’s what caused your existence. Chance and nothing. So what is your purpose? Nothing. You can’t have any. If you came from nothing, then you have no purpose at all, you just exist. So evolution literally teaches hell. It teaches existence without God. And sinners embrace this because they don’t want to be accountable to God.
So the rich man lives like what we call a practical atheist. If you asked him whether he believes in God, he’d say yes. But God is in none of his thoughts. God is not a reason for him doing anything. And that’s exactly what you see in hell. Nothing changes for the rich man. He spent life without God. He spends eternity without Him. The word “God” doesn’t come out of the rich man’s lips in hell. He calls on Abraham, on Lazarus, talks about his brothers and a lot about himself. But there is no mention of God. God’s not there. That’s hell. And people start living hell right here on earth by excluding God from their thoughts and their lives.
Hell is also the rejection of God’s Word. You see that very clearly in the rich man. Abraham tells him that his brothers should listen to Moses and the prophets and the rich man answers with, “No!” He has a visceral reaction against God’s Word. He looks down on it, considers it nothing. It can’t help his brothers.
But God’s Word is Him bringing heaven to people. Because God intends no one for hell. No one. He wants all to be saved. He didn’t create me or you or anyone you know for hell. He created us for heaven, to be with Him. That’s what it means to be created in God’s image, to know God, to love God, and that is heaven, that is everlasting life.
God hates hell. Far more than you do. It is everything that He is against. He wants us with Him. Hell is separation from Him. So He Himself did battle against hell. He suffered it to save us from it. When we say our Lord suffered hell we are not saying He descended to the place called hell to suffer it. We are saying God abandoned Him. He was without God. That’s what you see on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me.” That’s Jesus’ beautiful cry, beautiful because that’s God suffering hell; the Lord Jesus Christ, not simply suffering what any criminal would suffer, what thousands of slaves suffered in Roman times, death by crucifixion, but suffering hell – separation from God and all His goodness. That’s what your sin deserves, what your sin is – separation from God, and Jesus takes it, suffers it, to remove it from you. That’s God’s answer to hell. The Father forsakes His Son so that He can have us with Him forever.
The rich man silenced this Word. He’d heard it; he’d heard Moses and the prophets. He heard the promise of the Seed who would crush the serpent’s head. This is the Word that brings heaven on earth, because it brings God and shows Him reconciled to you in Christ Jesus. Jesus preaches this story to the Pharisees, to churchgoers, and this rich man stands for one of them. He’d heard it. But it doesn’t give you stuff. This Word. In fact, it tells you to sacrifice your stuff, give up your love of money, and replace it with love of the God who gives you everything. And that the rich man would not do. He genuinely despised the Word of Christ-crucified. Because he loved money and all it could do for him on earth. That was his pleasure and he chose it above the God who gave it.
That’s why he went to hell, the only reason anyone does, and that’s why he continues to do exactly the same thing in hell, tells Abraham God’s Word won’t work. Tells him to do it another way. But God has done it the only way. God comes with open arms, with hands pierced, with life to give, and he spurns it, looks down on it like its nothing. That’s hell. And people begin living it right here on earth.
But Lazarus had heaven on earth. He didn’t have riches or health or worth among men. But he had God, and that is more than enough. The Psalmist says it, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Lazarus does not look rich, but he is rich. If you have God, you have everything. So Jesus to the Church in Smyrna says, “I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich!).” He calls them poor and rich in the same sentence. Because the world may look at them and see they have nothing, but Jesus sees they are faithful, they have Him, and so they have all the riches of God, righteousness, eternal life, the favor of the One who gives abundantly to all who call on Him.
Our goal in life cannot be to have the riches of the rich man. What good did it do him? You notice how Jesus tells this story, how short the narration of the rich man’s life is? And how long his narration of hell? The rich man doesn’t even have a name! You give me all the money in the world and take away my name, so that I am nothing but a statistic, nothing but a cog in a wheel, and there is no way I’m taking that deal. The richness of being a Christian is not simply that you have a name, but that name lasts forever, God knows it, He writes it in His book, He writes it on His palms, He calls you by it in your Baptism, and He gives you His name, makes you His child, a Christian who shares in everything Christ is and has. But the rich man has no name. His memory fades from the earth, because it is never written in heaven. It’s a meaningless existence. Don’t dream about the riches that perish.
And don’t think that you’d be a better rich man. That you if you were rich would give millions to the church, to the school, to the college, to the poor. Don’t dream about it at all. It’s not worth your attention. If God happens to make you rich – and Christians do become rich sometimes, because Christians work hard and God does attach blessings to hard work – then you can give it all away for the glory of God’s kingdom. But don’t dream about it, because a poor dreamer can be just as obsessed with money and stuff as a rich possessor. Where your treasure is there your heart will be also.
Your treasure is Christ. He is your God. He reconciles you to the Father. He takes all your sin away. He gives you a life worth living as children of God that will have no end. And even if you were dirty and alone and begging with sores covering your body, if you have Him, you have more riches than this world can hold. So dream of remaining a Christian. Dream of leading a life of virtue, of seeing at the end of it your Savior face to face.
What lasts forever is not the riches of the rich man, but God Himself. When the rich man died he took nothing with him. When Lazarus died he took everything he held dear with him, because God was with him.
He inherited what Jesus promised. Lazarus is peaceful in heaven. He doesn’t say a word. He simply rests. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, because everything the world gives perishes, but the peace Christ gives is forever, so let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Live for heaven now. Acknowledge God in everything you do. See His goodness in all He created, especially in the faces of the little children. Hate the sin that mars it all and trust in the Lord Jesus who takes that sin away. Eat and drink His body and blood and taste of the heaven that you will live forever when the angels bear you home to rest in your Savior. Amen.